On a warm day in May, 2001, hundreds of supporters cheered as weary students emerged from Harvard’s Massachusetts Hall, ending their tense occupation of the President’s offices.

The battle to secure a living wage for the University’s blue-collar workers had been long and bitter. Years of stubborn resistance by the administration ended only after these pro-labor students provoked a crisis, facing down threats of force and retaliation.

State Representative Jarrett Barrios knew this; he had spoken at these rallies before. So when he praised the University administration that day—for its compassion and spirit of compromise—many in the crowd gasped.

This incident says something important about Jarrett Barrios’ attitude to wealth and power.

Jarrett Barrios is one of the fastest-rising stars in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. With free access to the media, he has an excellent press.

He ferrets out problems that can be addressed with little controversy and pursues the solutions vigorously. But, like his Party, he lacks vision and political courage.

He is an effective publicist for a wide variety of issues, even if the legislation he files may not pass. But when he sees you coming and thinks you might ask him a hard question, he pretends you’re not there.

A skillful opportunist

After four lackluster terms representing Cambridge’s 28th Middlesex district, Alvin Thompson almost lost the 1996 election to Dennis Benzan, who ran as an independent.

Barrios saw his opportunity, and quickly bought a house in Thompson’s district.

The Democrat party in this district was dominated by white liberals, ready to support candidates on the basis of their identity, and Barrios was both gay and Latino. Being a Harvard graduate didn’t hurt.

“Real estate lawyer” was not necessarily a good identity to have, although donations from his law firm gave him financial mastery from the beginning. But he had done deals in subsidized housing. So he could call himself an “affordable-housing attorney.”

His biggest disadvantage was that he was a newcomer—his four rivals in the 1998 Democrat primary were longtime Cambridge residents—there had to be an answer for that.

In June the Cambridge Tab published an op-ed, “Nativism threatens Cambridge fabric,” by one Rafael Muñoz. “Today Latinos… are the latest to fall prey to nativist rhetoric.… Anti-newcomer rhetoric is toxic to the public atmosphere.”

However, rival candidates Benzan and Lopez were hardly newcomers. Muñoz didn’t mention that the organization he worked for was founded by Barrios.

“I don’t get involved”

It turned out that incumbent Alvin Thompson was about to evict one of his tenants. Betty Loder was a lifelong resident, surviving on social security and Section 8 with two of her sons.

Jarrett Barrios, campaigning in Riverside, knocked on her door one day. She explained her situation to him. He told her he couldn’t do anything for her himself, but that she should call the media, because the publicity might get Thompson to back off.

David Hoicka, who was also running against Thompson, was startled when she told him what Barrios had suggested. He urged her not to publicize her case until he could get the documentation of her Section 8 case papers so Thompson couldn’t “disappear” them. He then filed an appeal to stay the eviction.

By September the story was front page news. On cable TV, Barrios was asked to comment on the eviction. He declined, saying, “I don’t get involved in the misery of others.”

After the election, Representative-elect Barrios wrote a homily about homeless people in the Cambridge Chronicle. “My view of residency in Cambridge is a broad one; I consider residents of park benches and heating grates to be my neighbors.”

Betty Loder was now homeless. When she finally found a new home, it was many towns away from Cambridge.

Too busy, I guess

A group of Cambridge activists began circulating a petition to put a rent control question on the 1999 City ballot. From June through September they wrote and called Barrios’ State House office to arrange a meeting to discuss their proposal. He never returned the calls.

The petition ran up against an unforseen problem. The number of signatures required to place a question on a city ballot is a percentage of the number of registered voters in the city; and to pass, a question must win at least 1/3 of that number of votes. But under a 1993 Federal law, voters are kept on city lists for years after they move away. In Cambridge, the number of these “phantom voters” was greater than the number of people voting in the city election.

Representative Barrios promised to support a Home Rule Petition to restore citizens’ right to petition. But in his testimony before the Committee on Election Laws, he held the bill up to ridicule by repeatedly declaring “the People’s Republic wants this.”

The years with Finneran

Jarrett Barrios had run for office as a reformer. He was in favor of the Clean Elections law for public funding of elections, and was very critical of Speaker of the House Tom Finneran, a social and fiscal conservative.

Finneran ran his House on a tight leash, but the House had adopted a rule limiting a Speaker’s term to eight years. Of course, when the term was up in January, 2001, the House chickened out.

Barrios sided with the chickens in a 111-39 vote to scrap the term limit. It was a matter of principle, he explained; he opposed term limits. “I often disagree with the present speaker. But it’s the same as term limits in any other setting.”

This was nonsense, as Ruth Balser (D, Newton) commented: “To allow an endless time to someone in that role who has not been elected by all the people is a fundamentally undemocratic thing to do.”

The next promise to go was Clean Elections. This time it was not a matter of principle—for Barrios it simply felt “quixotic” to abide by the rules since Finneran refused to fund the law. Though unopposed in 2001, the Barrios campaign raised $75,000.

Two years later when Barrios was a senator, the Senate repealed the Clean Elections law on a voice vote. A few senators spoke up for the law. Barrios was not one of them. He had nothing to say to the press. Any senator could have demanded a roll call — none did.

Movin’ on up

In 2002, Senate President Tom Birmingham was running for Governor, and Jarrett Barrios decided he wanted that Senate seat in 2003. Therefore, his House district in Cambridge could go to hell.

The Legislature was in the painful process of redistricting — the redrawing electoral borders which occurs every ten years to take account of population shifts. Barrios thought he would do his fellow legislators a favor — letting them know that he would not object to dismembering his 28th Middlesex in the redistricting process.

Of course, he denied that he had done it, but Rep. Balser stated flatly that Barrios had told her it was OK to kill his district. Ken Reeves — who had hoped one day to run for that same seat — said, “Jarrett’s story protects Jarrett, and it’s not necessarily the truth.”

Saundra Graham — who had formerly represented that district in the House — denounced him for sacrificing “a seat that was not his to give away.”

A few weeks later, Barrios told the Cambridge Chronicle that it was the redistricting plan that had “pushed” him into running for State Senate. He added — “I’m running because I happen to get passionate, sometimes angrily passionate about issues like housing and schools and child care and health care access….”

Jarrett Barrios won the seat he wanted in the State Senate. He spent $409,000 — $100,000 more than the previous record set by William Bulger.

There was so much money that his pre-election financial report missed some $70,000 in receipts. “We had some checks that hadn’t cleared or something,” he said.

[Continuation in May issue]